Every time I see a new job posting that looks like a good fit for me, I struggle all over again, about what to do with my life. I lost my job 18 months ago; “terminated without cause” is what they called it. There are not a lot of jobs for someone like me; I am highly specialized and jobs that are a good fit are few and far between. And they are all in Toronto, which means I would have to commute 3 to 4 hours a day. So, I have resisted.

I have decided instead, several times over the last 18 months, to be self-employed. This is a scary choice for me. It is not easy to be self-employed in my field; I do not have skills that can be easily sold on the marketplace. I do research, policy analysis, and advocacy work on health issues related to the environment. There are not a lot of organizations looking to hire someone like me so a choice to be self-employed is a choice to create my own work. This requires creativity, experience, and a whole lot of faith in the universe.

I have a lot of the first two; I have been working in my field for 25 years and I have a gift for seeing how a piece of research or a project might further a policy goal. The hard part for me is having faith in the universe. I have spent a lot of time and energy trying to make things move in what I consider the “right direction”. I am pretty good at “making things happen”. But this means that I have spent a lot of my life swimming against the flow. While I have been able to accomplish a lot doing this, it has often cost me dearly.

And so, over the last 18 months, I have been trying a new tack; I have been trying to put the “universe” in charge. But that is a tricky business. How do I know what the universe wants me to do? Clearly, if I sit at home and do nothing, I don’t give the universe much to work with. So, I have been out there working up project ideas, lining up partners, researching funding pools, developing proposals, and trusting the universe to “show me the money”. So far, this has been working well for me. But my current project is coming to an end, and I am perusing the jobs ads once more. And so I keep praying for a sign from the Universe; to know whether it is time to wait, to sit in the void, wait for inspiration, and trust that the money will come; or if it is time to leap for the first job that comes my way.

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About kp

I am a woman and a mother, a sister and a wife. I have called myself a socialist and a feminist, an environmentalist and an activist, a pagan and an atheist. But, at this stage in my life, none of these labels feel right. I am searching; trying to find an inner calm; trying to make peace with life's disappointments; trying to answer the big questions in my own small life.

3 Responses to Learning to Trust the Universe

Well, if you’re anything like me, you put the universe in charge and then under the influence of fear and confusion, take it back.:) This is human nature and to some degree, I think most of us do it. It’s our main lesson here–how to make that contact solid?
I have moments when I’m fear-free and ‘in the flow’ and all is right with me and the world, no matter my circumstances. But I have more moments of struggle and disappointment–when I can’t see the path ahead and I am afraid of the future. What helps to bring me back to ‘All is okay,’ is practicing being in this moment right now. My therapist taught me to ‘be here now,’ to take control back from my fear-filled thoughts, by sitting quietly, breathing deeply, and then acknowledging, one-by-one, everything in the room, like: Oh, there’s a lamp and in front of it is the printer, which is on a table next to the loveseat and so on. She would make me go through her entire office or until this exercise slowed my thoughts, which slowed my fears. Sometimes I’d actually laugh at myself when through with this practice.
Meditation is the ultimate answer to quieting the mind, but I often find myself feeling so stressed, I can’t meditate. It’s just a part of the process; and I think this is generally a hard period of time for everyone on the planet. I have noticed, also, that I do better when I don’t listen to the news or buy into ‘conventional’ thinking.
Really great post. Hope this comment is okay.:)

Hi Notes: When I got this note a few weeks ago, I was a little overwhelmed by work and unprepared for the interactive component of blogging. Now, that things are settling down a bit, I am taking the time to read the comments and really take them in. Your comments above hit the nail on the head; I take these leaps in my life with a certain faith in the universe and then when I am in free fall, I panic and wonder what on earth I was thinking. When things were really bad, I was meditating on a regular basis, and that kept me centred, but now that my life is busy again with work, I slip out of the habit of meditating and find it very hard to get back to it. kp